And yet I’m asked: why?
why do writers even bother
writing verse nowadays
when it is a dead form
and nobody reads much of anything
anymore anyway?

And the answer is that
our job is to pay attention.
and besides,
poetry is there, too,
there in the advertising jingle
and the twitter feed
and the streaming line of text beneath the newscaster.
Poetry is there,
in the road sign
and the bookshelf spines
and the medicine cabinet.
Poetry is there,
you’re just not looking
at what you’re doing.
Poetry is there,
telling you so.
Right now.

 

–Mike Arnzen

Locus Roundtable » On the Irrelevance of Genre Poetry.